Gaetz responded to this today. Basically, he said that a former member of the Justice Department tried to blackmail him though his Dad. Gaetz and his family went to the local FBI in Florida. They had his Father wear a wire and he recorded the guy doing it.
According to Gaetz, the leak of this story was to get ahead of what the tapes will show.
I 100% believe he was being blackmailed. But the reason he was blackmailed was because he’d slept with a 17 year old. Much harder to blackmail the innocent.